Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll

SEx,dru s And rock & roll

GLAM ROCK'S IMPACT ON THE '70S AND '80S Written by Rachel Hale, Culture Editor Photographed by Molly Jacobs, Staff Photographer Modeled by Rachel Hale and Austen Wallenfang Makeup by Riley August, Makeup Director

Platform boots, outrageous hair and cocaine galore: It was the 1970s, and dreamy psychedelic sound had given way to a louder, more ostentatious celebration of celebrity culture, style and music.

Sandwiched between the catchy bubblegum pop of the late ‘60s and rocker hair metal of the ‘80s came punk’s flamboyant younger sibling: glam rock. Highlighted by stars like

David Bowie and Marc Bolan, the rockand-roll subgenre came to represent an era of music that pushed gender norms, embraced the avant-garde and brought performance back to the forefront of the arts scene.

As was true of the boy band hysteria of the ‘60s, America has its neighbor from across the Atlantic to thank for glam rock. Originating on the British pub scene, glam rock cut through much of the heavily politicized music of the ‘60s to return to simpler, ‘50s inspired lyrics and aggressive chords. Musically, the sound was dominated by heavy guitar and shaped by hardrock and pop.1 In a subsequent counterculture of their own, glam rockers were, as English musician Robert Palmer put it, “rebelling against the rebellion.”2 The genre fought against rock ideology insisting a musician’s persona and music must be one-andthe-same, embracing a hyperbole of performance so outlandish that it challenged the music itself.

Though Bowie is perhaps glam rock’s most well-known artist, his teenage friend, Bolan of T-Rex, is largely credited with ushering in the movement’s origins. Forming T-Rex in 1967 England, Bolan’s signature curls, pink feather boas and androgynous satin silver

suits created a “T. Rextasy” among fans not unlike the Beatlemania that came before it, and glam rock cemented its electric sound in initial albums like 1971’s “Electric Warrior” and 1972’s “The Slider.”3 Bolan’s raunchy guitar riffs put glitter rock on the map, but it was Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona that broke the American music wall and cemented glam rock into history. Based on a bisexual rock star from another planet, Stardust, Bowie’s “projection of a doomed messianic rock star”4 portrayed a gender-fluid alien that succumbs to the allure of fame, promoting an image of decadence and camp aesthetic. Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” and subsequent sold-out tour launched the orange-haired performer to one of the most lucrative careers in music history, signaling a new era of rock in the process.

Rocker Alice Cooper once aptly described this shift: “We were into fun, sex, death and money when everybody was into peace and love. We wanted to see what was next. It turned out we were next, and we drove a stake through the heart of the Love Generation.”5

In the years that followed, bands utilized elements of glam rock in combination with subsequent movements like hard rock, disco and early punk. Slade used elements of glam rock’s simple chords in songs like “Cum on Feel the Noize,” Roxy Music bridged the gap between glam and punk with new wave technology, and Gary Glitter pushed the glam rock image to the extreme with glitter suits and platform shoes. Though the genre was primarily a British phenomenon, The New York Dolls and Cooper brought more violent, gritter styles of glam to America, and hits from British Elton John’s 1973 “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”’ topped charts in both countries. The glam rock movement of the ‘70s became categorized by a style that “emphasized the sartorial overkill of psychedelia, while strongly de-emphasizing the intellectual content of popular music.”6

³ Editors Rolling Stone, “T.Rex,” The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, p. 1003, 1995. ⁴ Ibid, p. 106. ⁵ Maxim W. Furek, “The Death Proclamation of Generation X: A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of Goth,” Bloomington, p. 62, 2008. ⁶ David Heslam et al., “The Rock 'n' Roll Years,” New York Crescent Books, p. 206, 1990.

At the end of the ‘70s, a heavier variant of glam rock combined with elements of Britain’s underground punk scene to shape the era of heavy face makeup and guitar solos traditionally associated with rock music today, also known as “glam metal” or “hair metal.” Pioneered by bands like Motlëy Cruë, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, Poison, Def Leppard, KISS, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, Whitesnake and Warrant, glam metal produced some of rock’s most infamous anthems, from “Pour Some Sugar on Me” to “Lick it Up.” Even as these bands sought to move their sounds toward hard rock and heavy metal, glam rock’s style and performance persona cemented its long-term role on the rock scene in performers’ leather pants, violent stage antics and crass lyrics.

Bands like Maryland’s Kix and San Francisco’s Night Ranger popularized glam metal in the U.S., and a club scene grew on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Glam metal performers’ infamous lifestyles of excessive partying, strippers and drugs made for tabloid press and MTV coverage that also helped make rock more mainstream. Even classic heavy metal acts like Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest incorporated glam metal elements into their performances, and Bon Jovi’s 1986 “Slippery When Wet” saw three top 10 singles, skyrocketing the genre’s popularity and widening its audience to women. By the mid-‘80s, glam metal achieved mainstream recognition, riding a wave of commercial success all the way until Nirvana’s grunge boom of the ‘90s.

Despite its influence, glam rock is often glossed over in rock and roll chronologies, referred to in fleeting paragraphs as the predecessor to punk. Scholars have categorized the genre’s fashion as “offensive, commercial and cultural emasculation,”7 reinforcing the idea that rock should be masculine, while others have referred to its sound as disparage, meaningless music. Yet the genre’s saving grace was its own self-awareness, profiting off largerthan-life imagery while knowing it was only possible to exist in a rose-colored version of reality in the moments of its own creation. Glam rock was monumental in its evolution of modern sound, and ultimately, in saving the rock genre itself. The 1970s saw rock’s

⁷ Georgina Gregory, “Masculinity, Sexuality and the Visual Culture of Glam Rock,” University of Central Lancashire, p. 37, Jan. 1, 2002. dance with death following a series of tragedies in the rock world, including deaths of visionaries like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Bolan himself. The Beatles broke up, Mick Jagger turned the Rolling Stones commercial and concerts became violent as rock and roll elites grew more removed from the realities of everyday life.8 The palatable glam rock that followed bridged the gap between rock and easy listening, and the outlandish permed hair, live snakes and glaring strobe lights of its concerts commanded fans’ attention. In this way, music returned to its roots as a form of escapism, making costume and persona as central to glam rockers’ music as their lyrics. Glam’s brazen embrace of fame, ego and decadence saw the rise of some of rock’s peak performers, from Bowie to Freddie Mercury to Prince, all of whom kept audiences listening to rock.

Perhaps more important is glam rock’s monumental role in forcing the music world to consider the expression of sexuality and gender. In a genre dominated by testosterone, glam rockers created a version of masculinity that left room for feminine expression, combining elements of 1930s Hollywood glamour and 1950s sex appeal with new-age futuristic and spacey garments. Performers who were out like Bowie, Mercury and John allowed LGBTQ+ youth to find a male identity in rock, and the music scene saw an embrace of LGBTQ+ issues and women’s liberation.

Glam rock highlighted a transitional era of rock with its zest for life and embrace of persona, and its legacy lives on in the way it challenged gender norms and the music status quo. Androgynous fashion and cross-dressing set the stage for the style of artists like Harry Styles and A$AP Rocky, and musicians like Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus have embraced glam-like personas on worldwide stages. Genres like alternative rock and punk take lyric and chord cues from glam, and stars from the era inspired the careers of countless current performers. Despite its brevity, glam rock’s legacy transcends gender, genres and generations, and it should be remembered for the way it forever altered the path of music history. ■

⁸ Philippe Paraire, “50 Years of Rock Music,” Edinburg, p. 122, 1992.